Brighton Dome reopens

Brighton Dome’s historic Grade I and Grade II listed Corn Exchange and Studio Theatre have reopened for live performances following a six-year refurbishment.

The work is the first phase of a regeneration project by Brighton and Hove City Council, in partnership with Brighton Dome and Brighton Festival and Brighton and Hove Museums, to cement the Royal Pavilion Estate as a landmark destination for heritage and the arts. The refurbished spaces have been designed by Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios.

The original wooden beams of the Corn Exchange’s timber frame have been repaired, strengthened and restored to designs by the building’s original architect, William Porden, in the early 1800s. The Studio Theatre’s original features, such as crenelated windows that mimic the character of the Royal Pavilion, have been conserved and its ceiling replaced with a new yet historically accurate version. Its exterior has been restored and repaired.

The Grade I listed Concert Hall and Corn Exchange were originally commissioned in 1803 as a stable block and riding house to accompany the Prince Regent’s extravagant seaside palace, the Royal Pavilion. William Porden took inspiration from the Jama Masjid (Friday Mosque) in Delhi for the stable’s exterior, and the glass ceiling of the huge domed roof owed a debt to the Paris Corn Exchange. The dimensions of the riding house were equally ambitious, its 18-metre-wide single span timber roof remaining the largest in the country.

The stables were used as a cavalry barracks until the interior was remodelled as a concert and assembly hall, and reopened in 1867. The riding house reopened in 1868 as a Corn Exchange. In 1934 and 1935, both the Concert Hall and Corn Exchange were refurbished by architect Robert Atkinson. The Concert Hall received a radical art-deco redesign, and the Corn Exchange was repurposed as a single, grand room for exhibitions and functions.

This article originally appeared in the Institute of Historic Building Conservation’s (IHBC’s) Context 179, published in March 2024.

--Institute of Historic Building Conservation